Aevum of Itero

Chapter 11

She was alone.

She was alone, the winds were lashing rain that beat furiously at the clothesline of separated whites and darks and, more importantly, she had slipped.

"Help," she cried out, but no one was around to answer.

Lucas was down in the barn, tending to an ill horse. He wouldn't hear her over the storm. Nuala had gone into town with her mother, at Brenda's insistence. Nuala's father had taken her siblings to visit their ailing grandmother. Brenda had decided to do the washing, one of the few chores she was permitted by the overprotective family to do following her visit with Doc Haloran.

It was the first time Brenda had been alone in the two months she had lived with the Buckleys, and it had to happen when the radiant sun decided to hide behind enraged clouds.

She had been close to the house when an unexpected twinge in her lower back caused her to step into a rotted wooden plank and fall into the grass below.

It was a wonder she could walk at all, in skirts that trailed to the ground and feet she couldn't see.

She missed jeans. Summer dresses. Shorts. Shirts with skinny straps.

Trousers. Fuck, she desperately missed trousers; pants, as she had grown up calling them.

Her hand instinctively went to her stomach, cradling the child hidden beneath her skirts; or children, she couldn't be sure. There had been no further bleeding following the visit with Doc Haloran, but there had also been significantly less movement than Brenda had felt prior to that night in the bathroom.

The night she left Connor behind thinking him a copy seemed so long ago, as if it had only been a scene in one of her books.

If it weren't for the pregnancy, she'd have convinced herself she had always been Brenda Walsham, County Cork's disappearing act.

It was the dreams that helped her to remember, dreams that often involved Dylan.

She never recalled what he said, only that she faced a constant barrier blocking her from seeing him.

"Help," said Brenda again, weaker this time. "Please."

She was answered by the raindrops upon her face. The creaking of the old house. The rattle of a snake through tall blades of emerald grass.

No. She imagined that. There weren't snakes in Ireland. The legend said Saint Patrick had banished the snakes by decree. The reality was that there had never been snakes in Ireland.

She had once inquired of Connor why the legend existed when it was untrue.

"Every legend has a wee bit of truth to it, my love," he had said.

"Is that why you became a producer? To find the truth in legends?"

"A bit why you became an actress, isn't it? To tell stories. Relive history. Share it with the public, so it is remembered."

A different creature must be crawling nearby, searching for a chunk of her flesh.

A pound of flesh, like the Venetian merchant in Shakespeare's controversial play.

She pondered who would remember her if she were devoured.

Would anyone grieve for her, when they were unaware of a reason to grieve?

No one was around to hear her. No one would come.

They would all remain in the images soaring about in her mind: Brandon. Val. Nicola. Maddie. Ellie. Steve. David. Caoimhe.